


Somewhere My Love Lies Sleeping

by cxptained



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Dog Tags, Domestic Fluff, Fluff, Husbands, M/M, Mentions of War, Sleeping Together, Sleepy Cuddles, Sleepy Kisses, Slice of Life, Spooning, soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-08
Updated: 2020-11-08
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:53:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27460750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cxptained/pseuds/cxptained
Summary: Joe grumbles softly but his leg relinquishes about an inch. It allows Nicky the chance to lay down on his side uncomfortably at least. He faces his husband, propped up on his elbow. His eyes sweep the man contentedly, enjoying how each headlight that floods the room lights up his face in the most breath-taking manner.“I thought you missed me, Joe.” Nicky teases. He reaches out and gently pries Joe’s fingers away from the warmed metal they clutch. “So let me in the bed.” He says, drawing the hand to his lips and kissing each knuckle individually.----------------It's 3am and Nicky's been on a stake out for a few days now. It's time to go to bed and see his husband.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 20
Kudos: 356





	Somewhere My Love Lies Sleeping

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, hello, I am new here. I watched this film 6 times in one week and I'm obsessed so here is my first attempt at a fic for this fandom!

Nicky rises from his chair at three in the morning. His back aches from the hours hunched over his sniper, his head heavy with exhaustion. He has been awake for over two days now, his gaze firmly trained on the warehouse across the road. There are notes to the side of him; a book filled with tendencies and routines he’s learnt from watching their targets. 

This job is long, but he’s not about to let it slip away from him.

Tonight, however, he had been informed that under no uncertain circumstances he was to find his way to bed. As he stretches his arms up and rolls his neck from side to side, he hears his bones crack satisfyingly. He’s been cooped up in that seat for too long. He needs a break. Some sleep. Anything that isn’t the scope of his sniper. 

With no movement in the past three hours - and rarely a peep before five according to his notes - he feels comfortable enough to step away from the window without the fear of missing anything. He moves from his spot and into the living room, flexing his fingers out of their stiffened grip with a crackle and a pop. 

“Booker.” Nicky mutters as he enters, finding the man face up in an armchair. The TV is blaring some shit neither of them would care to watch, but in the early hours of the morning your options are rather limited. Booker, however, is dead to the world. The remote laying limp in his grasp across his lap; mouth open; and eyes closed. 

He doesn’t snore though. If he snored, the team would have abandoned him a hundred years ago. 

“Booker.” Nicky says again, louder, this time adding a gentle nudge against the other man’s ankles. 

“Wha?! Huh…” Booker jumps to alert, picking up the remote in his lap as though it were a gun. 

Nicky’s brows crease in amusement, a curl to his lips as he tries not to laugh. Booker looks down at his choice of weapon and coughs harshly, putting it down on the arm of the chair. 

“Your turn.” Nicky tells him, entertained, gesturing towards the window.

“My turn? Booker echoes before the realisation dawns on him. “You finally giving up your post, Nicky?” He asks in faux disbelievement. 

“Until tomorrow morning.” Nicky responds. “If I don’t my husband will have my head.”

“Romantic.”

“Incurably.” He says with a smile, turning on his heel.

He hears Booker rise with a groan and the kitchen chair scrape back. Their bodies may remain young but they move like the ancients they are while half asleep. 

Opening the door to the bedroom is hard. He knows Andy and Joe are asleep inside, and the last thing he wants to do is wake the entire house up at this ungodly hour. Andy especially, once up, is unlikely to go back to sleep. As he twists the knob it creaks unfairly loudly but after a moment of relying on his completely home-taught espionage skills, he’s slipped inside the room without a ruckus. 

Andy remains fast asleep, her back to the door and body curled against the cool wall. She wouldn’t sleep like that if she was alone, Nicky knows. But Joe is only one bed over, trained for a thousand years to sleep with his nose in the back of Nicky’s neck - and Nicky never sleeps facing away from the entrance. 

He smiles at the sight and turns slowly on the squeaky wooden floor to face his husband. 

Joe is curled on his side, hands curled tight against his own chest, and facing the door as he always will. He’s also very much on the wrong side of the bed. For a moment, Nicky doesn’t move. He just stares at Joe, with a gentle smile on his lips and adoration in his eyes. There are not many moments in immortality (especially not in their line of work) that the world simply stands still. Nicky doesn’t get to smell the roses. But just for a minute, he can watch how beautiful the man he loves truly is. 

It takes him a minute to realise that Joe’s fingers are curled around something in particular. The headlights from a passing car shine through their windows, causing the metal chain around his neck to glint bright silver and Nicky’s heart soars. 

After years, it’s easy to forget what hasn’t always been. Joe’s worn dog tags around his neck since the early 20 century. A good tenth of their lives passing by and Joe has never once removed the pieces of metal from the chains that hang around his neck. They’re never questioned. Any man in this day and age could have picked them up in any of the wars raging the world over but these are specific. 

These are Nicky’s tags. 

They are a keepsake from the first world war, when they had been forced apart and made to fight. They knew they would find their way back to one another - it was impossible to think otherwise - but the ordeal had been horrid for the both of them. 

The blood and the corpses, piled high among the trenches are seared into his memory. The Crusades had been horrifying, but the guns and the bombs and the bullets made this even the more worse. Humans littered the ground, blown to smithereens, riddled with wounds. Miraculously, Nicky never died. 

Joe had. His tags were taken when an enemy bomb had exploded. He’d been helping a fellow soldier, dragging him back to the trench for medical aid, Joe had told Nicky one night in the darkness years later. A bomb fell from the sky and that was the end. His revival was long, a superior taking his tags to count him among the dead when his body was found cold and still. Joe came back some time later. 

But his tags were gone. 

Nicky had placed his own dog tags around Joe’s neck that night. He remembers kissing his forehead in a torch-lit cave.

_ “Never again, mio amore.” _

“Mio amore,” Nicky murmurs under his breath as he comes to sit on the edge of the bed. He kicks off his shoes and pulls his legs up onto the springy mattress. “Mio amore, let me in.” He chuckles, pushing his palms against Joe’s knees in an attempt to get his usual side of the bed back.

“Nmmm…” Joe whines softly and Nicky’s head drops with a breathy laugh through his nose as he tries not to wake Andy on the other side of the room. 

“You were the one who threatened me with violence if I didn’t come to bed.” He reminds lightly, lifting his hand to Joe’s hair instead. Nicky drags his fingers through thick curls with a smile. “So move, hm?”

Joe grumbles softly but his leg relinquishes about an inch. It allows Nicky the chance to lay down on his side  _ uncomfortably _ at least. He faces his husband, propped up on his elbow. His eyes sweep the man contentedly, enjoying how each headlight that floods the room lights up his face in the most breath-taking manner. 

“I thought you missed me, Joe.” Nicky teases. He reaches out and gently pries Joe’s fingers away from the warmed metal they clutch. “So let me in the bed.” He says, drawing the hand to his lips and kissing each knuckle individually.

Joe smiles this time, eyes blearily and stubbornly opening to gaze up at his husband. Nicky smiles back. He leans in, finding Joe’s tired lips with his own and kisses him slowly, lazily, and deeply. Joe’s arm reaches up around his neck after a moment and draws him in closer til his body heat radiates against Nicky’s skin. 

Under them, he feels Joe’s legs vacate his side of the bed and Nicky smiles against his lips before pulling back. 

“Thank you.” He says with a chuckle before shimmying down into his own covers. 

“Position.” Joe murmurs, not anymore awake from their kiss than he had been when it started, and Nicky turns onto his usual side. It wasn’t a request, more of a demand that he’s all too happy to comply with. 

“Bossy.” Nicky mutters, smiling into the shadows of the room. 

“Deserving.” Joe says in return. Nicky has to guess he has a point there. 

As per usual, an arm slips beneath his body, another over the top and he is encircled completely within the embrace of his husband. The cherry on top comes seconds later as Joe’s nose nestles into the nape of his neck as it does every single night. 

“You’re cold.” Joe adds a few moments later, and Nicky supposes now he thinks about it, he is. 

“I have been sat by an open window in November.” Nicky says, the corner of his mouth crooking a smile. 

“Good job I told you to come to bed before you froze to death.”

“Mio salvatore.” Nicky jokes, rolling his eyes.

“Saving your ass is a full time job.” Joe retorts.

They fall into an amused silence, Joe laughing silently between his shoulder blades. Nicky grins a little and relaxes further into the hold of his husband as his body finally releases the tension it’s been holding. 

“Good night, Nicolo.” Joe says, voice sleepier than it had been minutes ago and already fading fast.

“Good night, Yusuf.”

Nicky takes a breath and, for a moment, watches Andy alone in her bed across the room before he closes his eyes to the darkness. He’s spent nights away from Joe before, a culmination of which could add up to years but what is a couple in a thousand? A night away from these arms that encompass him and the warm breath that tickles the same spot every single night is one he simply doesn’t count in his years alive. 

They’re not worth it. 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading. Kudos and comments mean the world. Have a great day! <3


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